Other People's Marriages

by Rosie Thomas

Published 1 July 1993
They were 'the five families' - the pleasant hospitable Frosts, the brash and sexy Cleggs, flirtatious Jimmy Rose and aloof Star, maternal Vicky and reliable Gordon Ransome, Michael Wickham and his perfect wife Marcelle. Old friends, their lives are interwoven in a comfortable pattern of school runs and Sunday golf, barbecues and shared holidays. Until Nina Cort returns to the cathedral city of her childhood. Rich sophisticated and newly widowed, Nina is an exotic thread in the pattern, whose intrusion reveals a web of hidden flaws. In the course of a year from which none will emerge unscathed, the five families and Nina discover that you can never truly know the fabric of other people's marriages. Perhaps not even of your own...

Bad Girls, Good Women

by Rosie Thomas

Published 5 September 1988
Best friends, Julia and Mattie escape their dreary, suburban youth for the excitement of London. Mattie becomes a celebrated actress, and Julia marries an aristocrat. This extraordinary story of two women's lives over two decades explores the price of experience, the loss of innocence, and the endurance of friendship against the test of time.